Vulica Lenina, 6.(finally published draft)

I still do have very vague idea of what I’m going to write about, why I’m going to do this, what for, who will read this, and how often this blog will get anything, except for my bitter memories about another, the 4th or the 5th effort to start and CONTINUE with my own blog. It’s harder than it seems from the very beginning, and, I need to say, the toughest part is to endure more than 2 weeks — my longest blog’s lifetime so far.

I’ve just recently found, that I’m believing myself to be an aesthetically exquisite young man, and observe myself filled with bliss more and more often, when looking at some building, picture, out of the window, or sometimes at simple wall, for a long time. Why not tell everybody in the internet about that — everybody does so, I thought. At least, I’m not going to post the photos of my food here. Not yet.

What I’d want to write about today, is the building, which has absolutely nothing in its appearance, except for the fact, that this Tuesday I found it perfect. People are going, passing, striding, riding, driving past it, and never put their eyes up to it. So had I, all the time.

Well, it’s brown, and it’s made of bricks. And it has its hipped roof, and some mansard spaces underneath, with 1–2 lucarnes looking outside to the street, which is already not the city’s main Nezalezhnasti avenue, but not yet a historic centre. In the light of the day, when being in a hurry towards the city downtown or down to the so-called Upper City, together with the flows of traffic and humans, you would never raise your head enough to drop a look at it — you wouldn’t bother, especially if you didn’t for the handsome GUM, which, objectively, has much more to stare at.

But what about this perspective:

You’ve taken a fresh brioche à l’ail and sit down onto the branch on another side of the road, in a tiny park between iStore and Lenin street, there’s a Belarusian November, which is similar to the Paris January, the bench is still warm after a good continental October, while the air is full of winter freshness. The street LED lighting is literally shooting its rays upwards to the roof of the building, you sit in complete tranquility, despite all the people hurrying somewhere (what are they doing this for?!) and suddenly you feel a fit of complete, total, overwhelming, mesmerizing peace.

And realize, that the you’ve found Paris in Minsk, at the crossroads, in the place you would never expect at — with your back to the iStore and MacDonald’s, and with your eyes fixed at the even rows of brown bricks, tiny balconies you would pay millions to put your dining table onto in the summer, bright windows over stunning horizontal pilaster sides, with somebody behind these window, probably, cursing the noises outside, or, maybe, already used to them, motley but full-of-life boutique windows on the first floor, neighbouring to city’s one of the most fashionable cafes, Grand Cafe at the building’s corner, and absolute taste of the brioche… It is the most brown brown, I have ever met in Minsk, and Minsk’s most Parisian first floor I’d before encountered.

In 1956, when it was young, this apartment building, besides several hundreds of happy post-war move-ins, housed Minsk’ most luxurious restaurant Zaria, and was a pilgrimage destination for the melomans, with city’s unique gramophone disk listening shop.

Between 1991 and 2015 I had passed it thousands of times and never gave a notice to what is above me.

In November 2015, it’s the place I would return to sit in front of and look at.

Have a nice evening.